Copper Slips a Whisker, Yet Bare Bright Holds Its Crown

Well now, the ticker-men at IndexBox have posted their little sermon for this second of July: copper and brass fell, aluminum and ferrous held their ground like stubborn mules. A fall, they say — and I peer close and find our #1 Bare Bright resting at some $5.51 the pound, the whole market off a mere tenth of one percent. A tenth! My friends, that is not a fall. That is a red-metal gentleman tipping his hat and settling back into his chair. I have seen cents change hands rougher than that in my old Fort Wilkins, where I kept a caged bear and a tooth-pulling chair and a barrel of honest liquor besides.

And it is liquor I would speak of, as I always do. For while the paper-shufflers fret over a decimal, the still-men of this republic know the true worth of copper without consulting any index. Go into any hollow where the corn is turned to spirit, and what do you find gleaming in the lamplight? The copper pot, the alembic, the coiled worm — red metal, every inch. It is no accident and no ornament. Copper reaches into the rising vapor and seizes the sulfur, the foul volatiles, the bite that would spoil a good dram, and it lets them go. A stainless kettle cannot perform this small miracle; it stands there cold and dumb. From the monastery brothers with their brandy to the Appalachian moonshiner sweating over his fire, the wisdom has never changed: copper makes clean liquor. Six centuries have not improved upon it.

So let brass dip a penny with copper — brass is but copper's cousin gone courting with zinc, and it shall recover its dignity. The red metal has more errands in this modern age than any market can tally. It runs as wire through the walls of every house, hums inside the electric motors, threads the plumbing that carries your morning water, sheathes the roofs that weather to that noble green, and now feeds those great humming data-halls and the electric carriages the young folk drive about. Copper does not retire. It merely changes costume.

My counsel to the scrapper this day: a market off one-tenth is no cause to hoard nor to dump. Sort your Bare Bright from your #1, keep your insulated wire honest, and let the radiators and brass find their own drawer. Five dollars and fifty-one cents for a pound of the conductor, the coin-metal, the maker of good whiskey — that is a fair reward for an honest pull.

Pour a small one tonight, and thank the copper that cleaned it.

Yours in the red metal, ever and always,
— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins